Thinking about purchasing BUT.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Rattlehead

You have no choice but to go through Steam presently. If you still decide go ahead with a purchase, I think it's fine to go ahead and buy the game now.

A lot of the complaints are from posters who have had the game for months, and are quite fed up with certain things that they feel have not been attended to in timeous fashion.
But if you're a hardcore simmer (and it seems like you are) there is a lot to take in and learn and enjoy, before some of the issues like radio comms become an annoyance.
Hopefully by that time, MG will have started to fix these issues.

Put it this way: 1946 is regarded as the benchmark, and yet there are many people that, after playing Clod even in it's current state, can't go back to 1946 as it just doesn't seem as realistic to them as it once did.

Pretty much my take on things as well.

The summary goes something like this:

1) Early adopters are either fed up with their personal pet peeve not having been fixed yet, or waiting patiently while adopting a "it'll be fixed in a few months, i'll play something else for a while" attitude, or swearing by it because they see some flashes of brilliance in it and consider the progress made thus far in the less-polished aspects acceptable and reassuring. In other words, it's a mixed bag and there's some pretty strong convictions going around that often lead to vitriol in the forums.

2) Newcomers are only just getting to grips with it. Depending on their patience levels and issues they might face, they are gradually gravitating to one of the previous categories. However, there's a lot to learn in the sim and this buys you quite some time before you can say you've seen all there is to see.

3) According to the recent development update, we should be getting reworked graphics and sounds two weeks from now in a beta patch, dealing with some stuff that's pretty high on the list of a sizable portion of the community.
After testing the patch for at least a week, maybe more, and fixing any potential bugs that managed to creep in, it will be released officially.
Personally, i'm more interested in corrections to the way some aircraft systems are modeled but according to the dev update this is next on the pipeline as well.

4) Content is not much in terms of missions/campaigns and MP servers are experimenting with the use of mission scripting, but just learning the ins and outs of the new way of flying, exhausting your amazement at the damage models and learning to manage your engines will probably take up more than a few weeks.


In other words if your PC has a reasonable chance of running it i'd say go for it, as the pace of upcoming patches is such that you will probably get new stuff to play with before you manage to get bored with what's currently included, or even come to grips with it in a comfortable manner.

For example, i spent about 6 weeks simply exploring the ins and outs of all the aircraft in the sim by flying quick missions and free flights, before even starting the campaign or jumping into a multiplayer session.

Ok, i'm a bit of an obsessive tester in terms of how things work in the sim and my experience is not entirely representative in this regard. However, i'd still say that
a) learning to keep your crate in the air at full difficulty settings
b) flying QMB practice missions to familiarize yourself with the aircraft
c) playing through the two stock campaigns
d) joining a few multiplayer sessions

will easily take up 4 weeks of your time, especially if you factor in other commitments in your life taking up your gaming time, by which point we might have new fixes implemented according to the development roadmap.